Miss Verinder said that the notion of treating the stage with contempt did certainly sound rather old-fashioned nowadays.
“Old-fashioned! I should think so. Even if they were anybody—which they aren’t. Do you know what my grandfather was? No. Well, I don’t myself. Father’s been jolly careful to prevent us knowing; but I know this—he wasn’t a gentleman. I mean, he hadn’t the smallest pretensions to being one. It was up in the north, and I believe he was just a person in a shop; you know, not owning the shop, but serving behind the counter—and he married grannie for her money. She wasn’t anything either. The elderly ugly daughter of some manufacturing people. But by a fluke of luck her share in the business somehow turned up trumps, so that while father was still a boy they were rich, and able to send him to Rugby and Cambridge. Then, when grandfather died, he and mother came to London, and bought the house in Ennismore Gardens.” Saying this, Mildred laughed scornfully. “Yes, and amused themselves by pretending that they’ve lived in it for ten generations.”
“They could hardly have done that,” said Miss Verinder, smiling; “because Ennismore Gardens have not been built long enough.”
“No, exactly. But you know what I mean”; and Mildred spoke with almost tragic force. “Father’s just a snob, and mother’s every bit as bad.”
Miss Verinder reproved her for speaking disrespectfully of her parents.
“I know, I know, Emmeline;” and Mildred hastened to assure her that till now she had always been fond of her parents—“poor dears.” She had been loyal too, entering into their little foolishnesses, never giving the show away; and she could feel fond of them again, if only they would behave decently.
Miss Verinder asked, “Do they really base their objections to—Forgive me, dear. What is his name again? Mr. Beckett. Yes, of course. Well, do they only base their objection on the fact that he is an actor?”
A crimson wave of indignation flowed upward from Mildred’s neck to her forehead, while she explained how they had the effrontery to say their real objection was—not so much that he was an actor, as that he was a bad actor.
“Who are they to judge?” said Mildred hotly; and for a space she held forth concerning the young man’s brilliant talent.
Miss Verinder asking how matters stood at the moment, Mildred told her that the outrageous Mr. Parker had simply forbidden them to meet. “But we do meet of course.” And with a few words she conjured up a picture of their clandestine meetings late at night in Ennismore Gardens itself—he driving as fast as taxi-cab would bring him from the theatre, she slipping out of the house to wait for him, and the two of them pacing slowly through that columned entrance by the mews and along the passage by the churchyard, in the warm darkness beneath the trees; peered at curiously by soft-footed policemen; encountering, as it seemed, all the servant-maids of the neighbourhood similarly engaged with their sweethearts. “Isn’t it degrading, Emmeline, to be forced to do such a thing?”